Author
Topic: Are honey bees protected by law (Read 24449 times)

bigbearomaha

I am aware of several people that keep bees in this area, yet, I get an incredible amount of calls from folks who said they got my number from the County Reeact center. I have even asked if they were given any other numbers and ether it's they can't recall or straight forward I was the only number they had.

I guess as long as I am willing and able to do it, I will and have no problem. I am hoping to work with new local bee handlers who want to learn and have the experience of bee handling, but due to lack of money, space, etc.. might not get the opportunity unless they volunteer at our apiary.

Eventually, I hope to spread the enthusiasm and the mindset of 'helping thy neighbor' to these volunteers and with any luck, this apiary will survive and be active beyond my own involvement.

I actually also get many county dispatch calls. From my days as an inspector, I am on the county 911 list. First responder stuff in case of emergency, truck flips, etc.

Many times, I actually ask the homeowner if they had called anyone from the local clubs in regards to an extraction. If they say no, I give them the proper numbers and suggest that I am the "last resort" and do get paid for my services. But they may want to call the club and find out if anyone would be willing to help out, even if it is for a fee. I am really busy during the normal bee season, and get busy doing this type stuff, to the point I don't want anymore calls.

More times than not, they call me back, after not finding anyone willing to do the job.

There are many times I would really not want the job, even if I was getting paid 300 dollars. The thought of doing it for free, is long gone.

Bjorn has said it all from the normal standpoint. I will say, from the "been there, done that" side, that there is available a good sideline business out there if you are interested. I have done it for 30 plus years, for individuals, businesses, governments, even other beeks. I get a minimum 300 and have gotten as high as a thousand, then when the bees are settled and doing well, I get an extra 150 to 250 for the hive.

Nearly every beek I know that does removals is quite willing to teach, if any of you younger beeks are interested in starting.

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"Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me . . . Anything can happen, child. Anything can be"

I can attest to the fact once you are known you will get calls. I contacted one local pest control company and one local nursery just about 6 weeks ago to try to get on a ‘SWARM’ removal list for next spring. So far I have been called for 3 cutouts (redirected 1, completed 1, the last one was sprayed with chemicals and I turned it down) and a swarm removal.

I am looking forward to the spring with optimism as I may be real busy. I did charge a nominal fee for the cutout and the home owner was very pleased. I would not, could not spend this much time without charging a fee and wouldn’t recommend if for anyone either.

Sorry folks, I'm late in reading this post. Today I started reading it from the beginning and found several LOOOOONG posts that I had a hard time following. Of course I dropped them after the first couple of lines. The original thread has changed topic matter several times.

Nevertheless, following on the last few posts, I have to say that I will not take anything less than 300 to just show up and look at the job. The average cutout, including finishing work is 800-1000.

I also had the opportunity to connect with several local exterminators in my area to ask if they would pass on some jobs in my direction regarding bee work. Two of them have actually sent several jobs my way. Several others (3 or 4) told me that they have their own trained staff. One exterminator contacted me to asked if I would remove some bees from a building they were working on. As I proceeded to explain to him that I did the cutouts or extractions for a fee he interupted me and proceeded to tell me that I was taking all his work away from him. I then explained to him that I have been doing this work for around 30 years and that perhaps it was the other ways around. He hung up so I don't know what his answer was.

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My favorite comedy program used to be Glenn Beck--The only thing is that after I heard the same joke over and over again it became BOOOORING.....

People who have inspired me throughout my life---Pee-wee Herman, Adolph Hitler, George W. Bush, Glenn Beck.Notice I did not say they were people who I admire !!!

bigbearomaha

Maybe it's regional, I don't know. I know I have talked to quite a few people over the phone this past 6 months looking to have bees removed. It's sad the number of people who would rather pay for a can of Raid instead of to have the bees kept alive.

I am conservation minded. the thought of killing a perfectly good colony over the excuse of money is just not acceptable to me.

Personally, I would go to great lengths to save a colony of bees, even if it meant doing a removal for free. I look at it as saving me money on bees that I would normally have to buy, plus I am saving the feral genetics. Unfortunately, I only had one cut-out this past year. I had several calls, but most of these were for yellow jackets and bald-faced hornets. There was only one other call that actually involved honey bees, but I would have needed a helicopter to get to the roof, and then would have had to remove the roof of the building to get to them. To some, beekeeping is a business, to some a hobby. For me it's a labor of love. The only time I am really happy and at peace is when I'm with my bees.

Maybe it's regional, I don't know. I know I have talked to quite a few people over the phone this past 6 months looking to have bees removed. It's sad the number of people who would rather pay for a can of Raid instead of to have the bees kept alive.

I am conservation minded. the thought of killing a perfectly good colony over the excuse of money is just not acceptable to me.

As has been said before, to each their own.

Big Bear

Bigbear,

Maybe it in the presentation, with actual facts and good advice thrown in. I tell people exactly why buying that can of raid and spraying the hole of a colony of bees inside their homes wall is not a good idea. Many people call me after seeing my info on the website. It is accurate, truthful, and upfront.

If I don't take the time to help the homeowner understand the potential disaster they may be causing themselves, then it's not about killing bees over money, to which I agree with your stance. It should not be about money. However, it should be more than a solution based on ignorance of the homeowner or in my failure to allow that to happen without divulging what is going to happen by such actions.

My fee is not costing the homeowner....it is saving him thousands by having them pay for the job to be done correctly, which happens to come at a cost much lower than that 5 dollar can of raid..... :-D

gaucho....good for you. Keep up the good work and providing a service to the community.

I actually had an exterminator a few years back call me for a job. He wanted me to be his "Bee guy". It would work this way.....He took the job, charged 500 dollars, and then would subcontract with me to take the bees out of homes for 100. He figured since so many beekeepers were willing to do it for free, I should be happy with the hundred. I told him if there were so many beekeepers willing to do it for free, then why was he offering me 100 dollars. I think he's still looking for a "bee guy" .... :-D

gaucho....good for you. Keep up the good work and providing a service to the community.

I actually had an exterminator a few years back call me for a job. He wanted me to be his "Bee guy". It would work this way.....He took the job, charged 500 dollars, and then would subcontract with me to take the bees out of homes for 100. He figured since so many beekeepers were willing to do it for free, I should be happy with the hundred. I told him if there were so many beekeepers willing to do it for free, then why was he offering me 100 dollars. I think he's still looking for a "bee guy" .... :-D

HA! good answer.I ran into that with general contractors with electrical - I wound up telling them "this is what I charge, you mark that up however you want." (of course it was better for the homeowners to contact me directly.)

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be happy and make others happy.

bigbearomaha

Well, I provide good information and rationale for not killing the bees, I'm not a sensationalist about it. Then again, I have never been that worried about collecting a check over it to begin with. so That would be one reason I don't push the issue of charging for the removal. One thing I didn't mention before that I perhaps should have is that even though I don't 'charge' to remove them, I am more than willing to accept a donation if they offer.

The apiary project is a non-profit one and if they are compelled to make a monetary donation, I don't turn it away. Maybe about a third to half of the people I have talked to have offered a donation after the fact in the past. With the project starting in a new, bigger direction this spring, I expect to do quite a bit more removals.

Also, I am not doing the work of opening the siding or wall to expose the colony either. If I were doing all of that, I might charge for that aspect of the situation.

One thing I want to add here, i am not suggesting that people do not charge, if that is what they choose to do and find people willing to pay. More power to you. I also don't want folks who don't want to charge to feel as though they are being pressured to charge for the service either. It really is up to each individual as to how to go about it.

I have agree that that not many people really do step up that often to do removals. The fact that there are a few who are, whether voluntarily or for a fee, is better than having no one to do it and let the bees die entirely.

:deadhorse: Well said, nice to see the hive buzzing so. Education would indeed solve the problem. Unfortunately, education would solve a great many of the world' s problems, problem being, there are a great many people alive today who will live many years to come without ever being educated. Coupled with the fact that many of our recent high school graduates are reading on a sixth grade level. So if you have to take the time to complete basic education before continuing onto bee education doesn't that then become more time consuming than the extraction. Here I was wondering where all the nice people in the world went I thought they were all dead when all the time they were all just bee keepers. No investment bankers in bee keeping I can see. Wake up and smell the new millennium: Nothing is Free, not air or water, nothing. Why then should anyone expect you to waste your time, a much more precious and limited commodity. I used to cut trees down for a living, not in the forest, but in the city, over structure etc. The man I started tree work with, had been removing trees, for over fifty years. He would save all the burnable wood, from the trees he cut during the busy season. Then during the lax season, (around the holidays), he would have it split, to sell as fire wood. He made fifty thousand a year, off of firewood, I'd be willing to bet was unreported, but never offered to do a tree for firewood. Why then would anyone do an extraction just for some bees ? I am suddenly reminded of magic beans. Especially if the survival of the hive is as unpredictable as some of the above posts suggest. As I said before, I live in New Orleans, termites are a major problem here, and the same millionaire slumlord, who regularly sprays hives in the wall, and leaves them to rot. Rather than spend, three hundred dollars,on an extraction, spent thousands having a couple of buildings tented and sprayed for termites. Termites do not generally devour a whole building, like depicted on television, but rather, they are drawn to an area by moisture, and devour said area, then moving on. Leaving a situation that I can only assume, closely resembles that of an abandoned hive, left to rot, inside a wall. The point is that if the prospective damage to property is comparable, why then should termites be given such priority, when there contribution to the environment is considerably less, even more so as they're only being destroyed, and not saved,as the bees should be. It's all about scare tactic marketing the only way anything gets done in this country. Thank god for bicycle helmets. Hard to follow hmph.. Anyway legislation to force people like this to do the right thing would only be protecting him from himself as although he is wealthy and accredited he still falls neatly into the category of people mentioned in the beginning of this post. $$ Home Owners $$ Home Owners $$ Home Owners $$ Let the insurance companies pay. If granny doesn' t have it, she should, more so than anyone. It' s Dangerous, It' s Hazardous, the resulting decay could compromise the structure. This week on discovery bee attack week. Scare tactic marketing combined with a save the planet movement it's a shoe in and should be done. Do you now pay premiums on a homeowner policy ? Have you ever made a claim against it ? Have you ever had a bee hive in the wall of your current or any other residence? Again I stress the infrequency. :deadhorse:

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bigbearomaha

In the interests of transparency, I can say I beleive in what I said about doing bee removals for free while I could afford it.

Having very recently had my job sent somewhere else, but I didn't get to go with it, that no longer stands true (the part abut being able to afford to, that is).

I have indeed put together a price for bee removals from a home, based primarily on local exterminators costs.

If, in the event I do charge for a removal, I will be charging $125.. with bees healthy and un raided. If the bees have been sprayed or otherwise poisoned, I will do it for $200.00 as I figure the bees being healthy can account for $75.00 if I were to buy them in a package.

Local exterminators charge $150.00 and do not remove the bees or nest afterward. They also do not do the handyman work part of the job and neither do I.

Concerning there being plenty of bees to go around: Where?Until I got a feral hive last year my garden squash, berries etc., were pitiful. Too many pollinators have been wiped out here. When I was a kid there were paper wasps, dirt wasps, yellow jackets prey on grubs and pest larva; bumble bees, honey bees, and small natural pollinators going form tree to tree in early spring; Now, only visitors to our fruit trees are honey bees and a few pests. Peoples gardens in last few years here have done very poorly with many pests; coincidentally it was at same time my wife and I noticed a large reduction in all bees. Our house is old and many bees used to reside in our attic for winter. Not anymore. Where oh where have they all gone?I only wish we had more predatory wasps and natural pollinators still here so we wouldn't have to fight off so many pests. And I live in a very rural area.

someone might have an answer for you if they knew where you were. you can go into your profile and put a location.

i don't know that pollinators have been wiped out. i know i didn't really notice them until i started keeping bees. i will say that our fruit orchard is better than it's ever been thanks to my beekeeping and my husbands orchard bees.

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.....The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called “the government.” They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved.....

I live in southern oklahoma. Our issue seems to be localized to certain areas, example; many predatory wasps around recreational cabins close to lakes but few to none around residences any more. With in last five years most bees and wasps have here have vanished, though some seem to be making a slow comeback.

I live in southern oklahoma. Our issue seems to be localized to certain areas, example; many predatory wasps around recreational cabins close to lakes but few to none around residences any more. With in last five years most bees and wasps have here have vanished, though some seem to be making a slow comeback.

That kind of makes sense. If wasps eating bugs around bodies of water are getting along fine, and bees eating bugs that may be poisoned by inland pesticides are dieing off, maybe there is a clue there.

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The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory